General Tips
As it's the case with any idle game, Clicker Heroes is perpetuated largely by mathematical formulas that generate new hero levels, stages, etc. as they become necessary. Because these formulas, by necessity, make progression in this game rather predictable, they allow a number of rules to come up, which you can follow to ensure advancing through the game at optimal speed. Transcending Due to the 1.0 update, the goal of Clicker Heroes has changed dynamically, and players are now aiming to get the most ancient souls/hour instead of the previous goal of getting the most /hour. For those players who have not transcended yet, ascend now and then transcend, unless your HZE isn't 300, which you must get to before the first transcendence. You want to be able to get as many ancient souls as fast as you possibly can, so you will have to decide whether you should transcend immediately to speed your game up, or if you should continue ascending to have more ancient souls when you transcend. The general rule of thumb is to transcend for 12-14 ancient souls, until you have 35 or more, when you should transcend for 8-10 ancient souls, because past the 35th ancient soul, the distance between the ancient souls becomes quite large. Also, make sure that you transcend right after an ascension, because you won't get the bonus from the that you would have gotten if you ascended. For example, if you have 900 , and the bar says "ascend for +300", but you transcend, you will only sacrifice 900 for ancient souls, instead of 1,200 which you could have done if you ascended right before transcending. Keep in mind what will happen after every transcendence: You will keep: * Ancient Souls * Rubies * Outsiders * Mercenaries * Clans * Purchased Gilds(restored gradually) You will gain: * Ancient Souls * Transcendent Power Everything else will be lost. This includes Zone Gilds, Hero Souls, Relics, Ancients, and Zone Progress. Transcendent players will no longer be able to buy Iris, Khrysos, Pluto, and Thusia, as they would be too powerful with them. However, despite not being able to buy these 4 ancients ever again, transcendent players still dominate and are more powerful. After transcending, it will feel a bit like the game has started over again, and you will have to work your way up again, without the help of , ancients, relics, and most of your gilds. The first few ascensions will be very slow, but once transcendent power shows its true colours, your game will speed up and you won't regret transcending. An extremely important tip is to save 50 rubies before transcending, so that you can buy 7 to help prevent the first few ascensions to be a pain in the ass. Outsiders and allocating Ancient Souls Currently, the optimal strategy for spending ancient souls is unknown, and the Math is still out there. When the best formulas come out, they will be here. For now, here are a few rules of thumb and things to keep in mind: * Unlike , which either add to your DPS or can be spent on ancients, ancients souls do nothing when unspent. Because of this, you should spend every single one of your ancient souls when you get them. * If you have less than 20 AS: you should put roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of your AS in Xyliqil and the rest in Ponyboy. You will never get high level enough for Phandoryss to make a difference. * If you have 20-30 AS: Maybe 2-3 levels in Phandoryss would help slightly here, but you should probably aim for 19 in Ponyboy and a few levels in Chor'gorloth, with the rest in Xyliqil. Borb probably doesn't help you yet. * 30+ AS: https://clickerheroestracker.azurewebsites.net/Upload Buying Heroes and Upgrades Because heroes increase in cost exponentially as they level up, they cease to be cost-effective extremely quickly. As such, the general rules for purchasing heroes and upgrades is as follows: * Level up each hero to level 10 and purchase their first upgrade before moving on. * Only after you have purchased 3-5 more heroes following this progression should you go back and finish buying that hero's upgrades. Exactly when you go back and do this depends on how useful the high-level upgrades of that hero are. Midas has extremely useful upgrades, so he should be upgraded as soon as his next upgrade is affordable. There are also some notable exceptions to this rule. For example: * Brittany, The Masked Samurai, The Great Forest Seer, Natalia, Ma Zhu, and Athena all lack upgrades that benefit other heroes. (If you're using an Idle Build, then Cid, Treebeast, Ivan, Alexa, Mercedes, Bobby, Sir George II, Referi Jerator, Abaddon, and Aphrodite don't have upgrades that help the other heroes either.) As such, it is unnecessary to strengthen these heroes past level 10 unless you start preparing to Ascend and when you want 14,000 hero levels, thus giving 7 extra after ascending. (When you earn so many that 7 of them is basically nothing, you won't need 14,000 hero levels.) * Grant and Frostleaf are so expensive that it is actually efficient to level the hero prior to them up past level 10 before moving on. Level Shinatobe up to level 25 and Grant to level 25 before buying Frostleaf. * Heroes which do not have a +100% upgrade as their first upgrade should be leveled up to 10, and have that upgrade skipped. Remember that the first rule above does only affect the PC versions of the game, both Steam and Web. If you play on mobile versions, either ios or Steam, you should basically level everybody to level 25 and buy both first upgrades, before moving on to the next hero. After you can get to level 400+ without having to farm, the strategy changes. (See Re-Gild Strategy below.) Using Skills Effectively There is excellent synergy between most of your skills, so you should try to use them grouped together whenever possible. In normal game play: * Always use Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, and Super Clicks together. If possible, use Golden Clicks as well. * Metal Detector doubles Golden Clicks' effect. * Try to use Clickstorm and Powersurge together, while waiting for the longer cooldowns of the above abilities. Powersurge does multiply the overall DPS by 2, and therefore does increase the damage of each click. * If you have unlocked all abilities and want a high DPS combo (excluding Dark Ritual) and you have gotten all non-hero specific upgrades (up through Frostleaf's Frigid Enchant), use your abilities in this order : Energize, Super Clicks, Reload, Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, Golden Clicks (8-7-9-1-2-3-4-5). Once Clickstorm and Powersurge are off cooldown, you can use them both with Super Clicks. * If you're looking for high GPS '''(gold per second) (excluding Dark Ritual) and you have gotten all non-hero specific upgrades (up through Frostleaf's Frigid Enchant), use your abilities in this order : Energize, Golden Clicks, Reload, Metal Detector, Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Super Clicks (8-5-9-4-1-2-3-7). You get 1/3 more gold if you use Energize on Golden Clicks rather than Metal Detector. * If you run into a Treasure Chest and have some abilities ready, use the '''high GPS combo, but instead, use Energize on Metal Detector rather than Golden Clicks. Only use Energize on Metal Detector if you are able to kill the Treasure Chest while Metal Detector is still active. Otherwise, use the high GPS '''combo normally. If '''maximizing DPS is your goal, then follow these rules: * Use Clickstorm, Powersurge, Lucky Strikes, Metal Detector, and Super Clicks together (1-2-3-4-7). For maximum effect, use Energize, wait for it to cool down, use Super Clicks, use Energize again, use Lucky Strikes, and then use Clickstorm + Powersurge + Metal Detector (8-wait;7-8-3-1-2-4). ** Unless you cannot click faster than 5 times per second(Who can't?), in which case you should use Energize on Clickstorm instead of Lucky Strikes. Keep in mind that an Energized Reload will reload the last two skills that were used (excluding Energize) instead of removing two hours of countdown on one skill. As such, the following combination is possible once you have 75% cooldown reduction (this combination is primarily used in the endgame, when a player is trying to reach the highest floor possible rather than constantly Ascending) * Use any skills you want except for Dark Ritual, Energize, and Reload * Use Energize * Use Dark Ritual * Use Reload * Wait for 15 minutes without casting any skills * Use Energize on Reload * Wait 15 minutes, using other skills as desired * Rinse and repeat! This strategy permanently ties up Energize and Reload, but allows you to get +10% DPS twice an hour. You will need Vaagur at a high enough level for this combo to work. One simple pattern to follow is: 1-2-3-4-5-7-8-6-9 (wait 15m) 8-9-1-2-3-4-5-7 (wait 15m) (repeat) When to Ascend A good early game strategy is to rush level 140, level up your heroes to 14,000 cumulative and then ascend, which will earn you anywhere from 8-16 , depending on primal boss spawns. Once you have the ancients to more easily defeat level 140-145, you will obtain the power spike of level 1000 gilded heroes, so it is advised to continue to about level 160 after this power spike. If you have already transcended, you should ascend between level 115 and 140, in order to get enough to buy Solomon, and Siyalatas and Libertas if you play idle. After the first 2 ascensions in a transcension or so, you should go until you can no longer defeat a boss without farming, which is when you should transcend. If you have already passed your transcendent primal zone cap, and are no longer insta-killing, it's no use to progress further, unless of course, you want to get one of the HZE achievements. Otherwise, ascend immediately. Choosing Ancients When choosing whether to purchase Ancients, which Ancients to purchase, and how much to spend on them, consider your total Souls earned per hour as a math formula. (Base damage from heroes × Souls in stash × Any Ancients you use to increase damage × Any other Ancients you use to increase damage × Ditto until you run out of damage increasing Ancients) × (Gold earned per kill / seconds per kill × Any Ancients you use to increase gold gained × Any other Ancients you use to increase gold gained × Ditto until you run out of gold increasing Ancients) × (Souls you normally earn per Ascension × any Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients × Any other Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients × Ditto until you run out of Soul per Ascension increasing Ancients) = Souls per hour. In other words, choose a team that works well together (Siyalatas and Libertas work well together for an idle build, but do not work well with Fragsworth, since using him removes idleness and thus cancels them), then balance your use of souls between the . Here are three different versions of the formula using different Ancients. (100 DPS × 10 Souls = 200 DPS × Siyalatas (100%) = 400 DPS) × (100 Gold per Kill / 10 seconds per kill = 10 GPS × Libertas (100%) = 20 GPS) × 3 hours to get to LVL 200 for 100 Souls × Solomon (50%) = 150 Souls every 3 hours) This final number, Souls per Hour, is the one you're looking at. Damage makes your kills faster and gets you to higher levels, gold makes your damage go up faster, but Souls is the reward of the whole game. So now you're seeing where each small part comes into play. What you saw there used a set of souls in reserve, along with three Ancients, Siyalatas, Libertas, and Solomon, for 100%, 100%, 100%, and 50% increases in four different ways. If I take any number and pretend this number is a representation of my total earning power, say 100, and multiply it by these %'s, I get 100 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 1.5 = 1200. If I'd kept all of those , I'd have gotten 10 + 7 to unlock 3 Ancients + 9 to level Siyalatas +9 to level Libertas + 13 to level Solomon = 48 Souls worth. So only a 480% increase with the same number of . 100 × 5.8 = 580. If I'd spent them all on Siyalatas, it would have cost me 1 to unlock, and I'd have gotten to level 9 having spent 45 . Level 9 would be 225%, with 3 souls left over for 30%. So using only a single Ancient would give me 100 × 3.25 × 1.3 = 422.5 Let's try one more example, with Siyalatas using as close to half of my Souls as I can and keeping the other half. Siyalatas at LvL 6 uses 21 Souls to give a 150% bonus. This leaves me 27 souls to keep as a 270% bonus. Now my math would read as 100 × 2.5 × 3.7 = 925. So, you can see where a balance of power that lets every multiplier in the chain be as high as possible is better than a single large multiplier. You can also see where several small multipliers can easily overpower a few large multipliers. So, in many cases, balancing how you spend your souls will depend on how many Ancients you can reasonably afford in your chain (Don't spend over half your stored up souls to get a new Ancient if you can't make that Ancient strong enough to at least double you in some way right off the bat), and then keeping roughly the same level of power in each Ancient, and in your Soul Pool. Many increases of double is worth far more than a single 8× bonuses. If you don't want to waste too much time, use this calculator: https://jsfiddle.net/graceoflives/2b7am8Lg/show/ Gilded Heroes Re-Gild Strategy To optimize the bonus from gilds, it's much more efficient to stack them on a single hero. Early on you will lose too much DPS doing this to make it worth it, but in a short amount of time, it will become vital. Also, for the pre-transcendent players, you won't need to regild to The Masked Samurai, as you'll transcend before it's necessary. As of patch 1.0e3, the optimum gilding strategy is as follows: # 'For pre-transcendent players only: '''Once you can pass zone 200 without farming, the ideal heroes to have gilded are the Power Five: Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Samurai, and Seer. At this point you won't be making a lot of hero souls still, so move your gilds using the random (2 hero soul) degild option until they land on any of these five heroes. # Upon being able to hit zone 400+, it is time to move your gilds to The Masked Samurai. You should be earning enough souls at this point to feel that 80 HS re-gilds are negligible in price. Using the 80 HS re-gilds, move your gilds to The Masked Samurai(this is the only hero you need to level for DPS in your runs now, besides the one that give global damage and gold multipliers). Get him to a level divisble by 25, then press 'T' twice, to get to the 25 toggle multiplier. You will do this for all your main heroes, just to make things easier. # Once you have quite a lot of , say, 1.000e7, you should save some of your instead of spending them in Morgulis, say about, 1.000e5, which you will use to regild. When you get Samurai to level 2500, Atlas becomes more efficient at 800, so level Atlas and move all your gilds from Samurai to Atlas with 'Q'. Once you get Atlas to level 1500, Terra becomes more efficient at level 1000, so do the same with her as you did with Atlas; level her to 1000 and move all your gilds from Atlas to Terra. You will keep doing this, leveling your main hero to 1500, then leveling the hero below to 1000 and regilding to that hero, until you either stop progressing further in the zones(which is when you ascend), or when you get Wepwawet to level 1500. Keep in mind that 1e5 will eventually not be enough; you will have a lot more gilds and you will need to do a lot more regilding. When this happens, you may want to save even more gilds. Don't worry, as you should have so many that multiple regilding will feel like nothing. Another thing to bear in mind is that Bomber Max and Gog have global gold and DPS multipliers, respectively, so once those are affordable, you may buy them. # When you get Wepwawet to level 1500, you will be able to buy his upgrade which makes Betty Clicker the most efficient hero to level up for a while. Move all your gilds to her. At this point, you will have so many that 'Q' costs barely anything compared to the amount of that you have. Once you get Betty to level 9850, you should be able to buy Wepwawet's level 2000 upgrade, making King Midas the most efficient to level up, until he gets to level 12550, when Wepwawet becomes more efficient and you'll move back to him. You'll be able to get Wepwawet to 6000, and then you alternate between him and Gog for a while, switching to the other as soon as it gets a new 10x multiplier. This stops once Wepwawet is at 8000. # By the time the gold requirement for another set of 25 levels of Wepwawet is more expensive than the first level of Tsuchi, you will want to regild to Tsuchi once you buy him. Do the same with Skogur with what you did with Tsuchi; once 1 level in Skogur is less than 25 levels in Tsuchi, buy Skogur and regild. Keep doing this until you get to Madzi, where she will be your main hero throughout each ascension, until you transcend again. Achievements Now that achievements no longer give bonuses, it is not suggested that the player attempt to earn some of these achievements while trying to play optimally. Also, note that these are the far end of similar-goal achievements, so getting all of these achievements below will get you ''all of the achievements. (For example, gaining the achievement Traitor(below), will mean you have already gotten the similar-goal achievements Ancient Crusher, Drinking Deep, and A Glimpse Outside, as getting these achievements require you to have 200, 100, and 50 Ancient Souls, respectively. Obviously, once you get Traitor, you will already have gotten the other 3 Ancient Soul related achievements.) Many of the achievements will simply require following the general tips, and will be gained with time. Relics Rarity of relics don't mean anything, you just get more forge cores. Here is a table of which tiers are the best for relics(these are the ancients they add levels to): The rows in each column shows the one that is the best, e.g., Vaagur is more important than Chawedo. The only exception is once your transcendent primal zone cap is beyond 5000, when relics that help Kuma become more important than those that help Atman. When you get a relic that you don't want(a relic with worse tiers than the other 4 that you have), you should click the salvage button, and take note of how many forge cores you will be offered. Decline the option, then level that relic by one level, click the salvage button again, and subtract the previous amount of forge cores you were offered from the current one. This is always/usually how many more forge cores the relic is worth with every level. Keep leveling up the relic until the price of leveling it up is greater than the forge core value of the relic per level, or when you can no longer level up your relic. After that, you should salvage that relic. Clans As a clan member: Most Clan leaders prefer their members to be active, so it's vital that you participate every day, regardless of your immortal damage. As the clan leader: You generally want people with a higher HZE or, at least, not much lower, in order to optimize total immortal damage. Take note of who is participating every day and who is not. You definitely don't want members who serve no purpose and just collect the from the immortals without making any effort to help the clan. Be careful about accepting members with too high of an immortal damage, as they may regard your clan as weak, and are highly likely to leave to join a stronger clan. Rubies The first investment any player should make with it's rubies is the permanent 2× multiplier in the Shop. Afterwards, rubies should be mainly used for quick ascensions and mercenary revives. Extra attacks on immortals are also a good investment if the daily immortal is about to fall down, yet could be "saved by the bell"... Other investments are much less worth their cost.Category:Guides